Takumi, a London-based “micro-influencer” marketing platform which connects brands to these influencers to create impactful grassroot Instagram marketing campaigns, today announces the successful completion of a Series A funding round worth $4 million to fund its US and global expansion. Previously it raised $3.1 million in seed investment and this new round brings Takumi’s total funding to date to $7.1 million. The latest investment comes from family offices and high net worth angel investors.

The fresh money will be used to support the company’s U.S. and global expansion, having recently launched into the American market. A few months ago Takumi launched in Ireland and also expanded into Germany last year. In addition, the funding be used to develop Takumi’s product further, enabling a wider range of campaign options and more in-depth campaign reporting. This will allow brands to understand and capitalise on the potential of influential social media users further.

Takumi provides a clearly differentiated model by being an “influencer first” managed service platform, with a focus on “micro-influencers” on Instagram who have between 1,000 to 200,000 followers. According to Takumi, “micro-influencers” generate a higher engagement level of 2.9% due to having more active and engaged audiences.

Takumi was founded in 2015 and already became one of the leading influencer platforms in Europe. Takumi works with over 300+ brands and agencies across Europe and the US, and to date has handled over 10,000 influencer posts for over 600 campaigns. Brands and agencies that it has worked with includes Domino’s, Havas, Hilton and Sony Music.

Takumi Co-Founder and CEO, Mats Stigzelius said: “Influencer marketing is still in its early stages but will grow into a major marketing channel over the next five years. Brands are increasingly leveraging social media influencers to create highly engaging branded content to reach their ideal consumers more organically. At Takumi we believe that the market will consolidate around a few proven winners in each major territory that are able to cater to the increasing client demand for quick, efficient, high quality campaigns and who can provide the required volume of campaign opportunities and talented influencers to fulfil those campaigns.”

Takumi Co-Founder and Head of Product, Solberg Audunsson commented: “Marketers are being burned by their negative experiences with influencer engagement campaigns. Transparency is critical to us at Takumi and this is why we’ll be using this funding to improve our product even further to enable more insightful and analytical campaign reporting.”